|
Black Broadway:
African Americans on the Great White Way
by Stewart F. Lane
c.2015, Square One Publishers
$39.95 / $49.95 Canada
288 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
A remote control and 500 channels.
That’s what you’ve got for entertainment, and there’s still
nothing on TV. That doesn’t keep you from looking, though,
and wishing for something different.
Finding entertainment shouldn’t be such a big production –
but in decades past, that’s exactly what it took for African
Americans, in more ways than one. In the new book
Black Broadway by Stewart F. Lane, you’ll find out
why.
|
 |
|
When William Alexander Brown decided to retire, he knew
where he’d do it: in the two-story home he’d purchased in
lower Manhattan. It was 1821 and Brown, a free black man,
knew that there were few places for black actors to perform
for black audiences, and he planned to allow performances
there.
The popularity of those performances spurred Brown and a
friend to “go a step further” with a 300-seat establishment
they named the African Grove Theatre. It, too, was
successful, until Brown was forced out of business by a
local white theatre owner who feared competition.
Not long after the African Grove Theatre was closed,
minstrel shows began attracting crowds of both races. Many
shows featured white and black entertainers in
burnt-cork blackface, as well as comedy sketches and dancing
– including many skits satirizing black life and culture.
“It’s not clear,” says Lane, “why the African Americans of
the era turned out to see” those shows – but they did,
perhaps to laugh “at the absurdity of the caricatures…”
By the late 1800s, vaudeville and burlesque had become
popular, and that added increasing diversity to shows. Black
entertainers were often included on-stage, and entire
productions were created with black troupes, for black
audiences. White people, of course, were welcome and did
attend; one theatre owner even gave them their own section…
in the back of the house.
Throughout the years, African Americans – both performers
and audience members – made strides, but slowly and with
help from the NAACP and the Harlem Renaissance. By the
1930s, Broadway shows included racial issues; by the 1940s,
interracial marriage was a common theme. In the 1950s,
audiences enjoyed performances dealing with poverty and
racism – but it wasn’t until well past the Civil Rights
years that black faces became a non-issue on the Great White
Way.
Loaded with pictures, playbill reproductions,
advertisements, and drawings, Black Broadway is a
theatre-goer’s delight.
But I was equally happy to see that there’s plenty for the
historian, too: in addition to a rich narrative on equality
for African Americans on Broadway (and off), author Stewart
F. Lane includes a running timeline of national and world
history to put the main body of this book into perspective.
We’re also treated to dozens of short-but-comprehensive
profiles of influential performers and people who, though
many haven’t graced a stage in decades, are still familiar
to followers of theatre, jazz, dance, and music.
With all that’s inside this book, give yourself time to
browse, read awhile, then browse again and enjoy. Black
Broadway is perfect for fans of stage and screen and, of
course, when there’s nothing on TV. |
